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Climate change models find maize, millet, other staple crops face ruin on up to one million square kilometers of African farmland

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Livestock could be critical to survival of African Agriculture as hotter weather and rainfall patterns shift, says new study

Climate change models find maize A new study by researchers from the Nairobi-based International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) and the United Kingdom’s Waen Associates has found that by 2050, hotter conditions, coupled with shifting rainfall patterns, could make anywhere from 500,000 to one million square kilometers of marginal African farmland no longer able to support even a subsistence level of food crops. However, the land, on which some 20 to 35 million people currently live, may still support livestock.

Boosting livestock production could be an attractive alternative for millions of poor farmers across Africa who, in the coming decades, could find that climate change has rendered their lands unsuitable for crop cultivation yet still viable for raising animals, according to the study that appears this week in a special edition of the journal Environmental Science and Policy.

“Livestock, particularly animals that are known to be tolerant of heat and drought, can survive in conditions that are far more severe than what crops can tolerate,” said Philip Thornton, an ILRI scientist and one of the paper’s co-authors. “Livestock can provide poor households with a buffer against the risk of climate change and, allow them to take advantage of the increasing demand for animal products in Africa.”

“Any increase in livestock must be managed sustainably,” said Carlos Seré, Director General of ILRI, which is one of 15 research centers supported by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR). “But our research shows there are many areas in Africa where over the next few decades climate vulnerability coupled with market demand for animal products will prompt many farming communities to add more livestock to their agriculture systems and we should prepare now for this inevitability. ”

The analysis is part of a range of studies published in the journal that emerged from an April 2008 conference at Oxford University on food security and environmental change. The publication coincides with a meeting this week in Bonn in which experts from around the world will consider how a new global accord on climate change can offer adaptation strategies for the rural poor.

Thornton and his colleague, Peter Jones of Waen Associates in the UK, sought to identify farm-dependent areas of Africa that might be most vulnerable to the effects of climate change. They focused on what are considered “marginal lands,” arid and semi-arid regions of West, East and southern Africa where, for example, scant precipitation already routinely causes crops to fail in one out of every six (or fewer) growing seasons.

The researchers then considered the impact of climate change in these regions and found that even in situations where climate change is moderated somewhat by global reductions in carbon emissions, a large number of farmers most likely will still face a considerable deterioration in growing conditions. The key measure was whether climate change under two widely used climate models—which offer projections based on high and low greenhouse-gas emission scenarios—would cause the number of “reliable crop growing days” to drop below 90 days between 2000 and 2050.

Mozambique, Tete province, Pacassa village

They concluded that under scenarios in which carbon emissions remain high, the number of reliable growing days would drop below 90 for almost one million square kilometers of marginal growing lands in Africa. Assuming a “lower emission scenario,” they project about 500,000 square kilometers would fail to reach the 90-day mark.

The researchers warn that if reliable growing periods drop below 90 days in these areas, “maize cultivation, already marginal, will basically no longer be possible as a normal agricultural activity.” They continue, saying that in some places, rain could become so scarce that “even the drought-tolerant crops such as millet” will be difficult to grow. They say that in these conditions, livestock could be the key to keeping food on the table and for earning income as well.

In particular, according to the study, livestock could provide a significant income boost for farmers trying to survive on marginal lands that are within a day’s travel time of one of Africa’s urban populations, where a growing demand for meat and dairy products could provide lucrative markets.

Thornton and Jones pointed out that looking to livestock as a bulwark against challenging climates is not a novel idea. They note that across Africa “livestock have proven to be a crucial coping mechanism for poor people who are trying to survive in difficult environmental conditions.”

Thornton said the goal of the research is ultimately to use climate change projections to pinpoint specific areas in Africa—each of which may be relatively small in size—where it is appropriate to promote livestock ownership on small-holder farms and to help farmers deal with the risks inherent in such operations. But he said employing this kind of research to direct policy decisions would benefit greatly from obtaining better data at the local level,
including data projecting what local temperatures and rainfall patterns may look like in the future.

However, he and Jones acknowledge that “there is currently a mismatch between the kind of localised climate change impact information that is urgently needed, and what can objectively be supplied.”

For example, even at large, regional levels, while there is consensus that temperatures will rise significantly, different climate models don’t always agree as to how climate change may affect rainfall amounts and patterns in some parts of Africa. But they said investments in generating such details are warranted given the potential to bring new levels of precision and efficiency to aid programs focused on alleviating poverty among the rural poor in Africa, most of whom depend on small holder farms for food and income.

The researchers also observe that better data will inevitably show what some may be reluctant to see, but which must be confronted nonetheless: that in certain parts of Africa where growing conditions already are difficult, there are simply limits to what can be done to help farmers adapt to climate change. Harsh reality though it may be, Thornton and Jones said it is important for development agencies and governments alike to understand that as climate conditions become more inhospitable to agriculture in some places, there may be “a point at which households and farming systems become so stressed that there are few alternatives to an exit from farming.”

New threats, new thinking at the animal-human disease interface

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To get serious about controlling emerging human disease, we're going to have to get serious about understanding and controlling their origin in animal disease, often in developing countries

 


As the world's governments raced to deal with a looming flu pandemic starting some two weeks ago, in late April 2009, World Health Organisation (WHO) officials confirmed that the world is better prepared than ever before to deal with a pandemic, thanks largely to six years of research and preparations to battle bird flu and SARS. Nearly 150 countries are now known to have drawn up contingency plans covering everything from the response of health services to travel restrictions and international co-operation.

Although it contains animal genetic components, the current influenza A(H1N1) virus has not been diagnosed in animals before and has spread from person to person, threatening an influenza pandemic which, according to scientists, is inevitable, even though no one can predict the timing. Three serious influenza pandemics occurred in the 20th century, with each new virus eventually infecting up to a third of the world over the course of one to two years: the 1918 ‘Spanish flu’ responsible for more than 40 million deaths, followed by the 1957 ‘Asian’ and 1968 ‘Hong Kong flu’, which killed between 1 and 3 million people worldwide,

The history of flu epidemics and pandemics, which can be traced back with some accuracy for the past 300 years, tells us that outbreaks occur somewhere in the world in most years and pandemics, which are epidemics that spread worldwide, at 10- to 50-year intervals. Despite influenza and its causative organism being the most studied of viral diseases and pathogens until the advent of HIV/AIDS two decades ago, little has been done in the past century to change the pattern of influenza infections.

 

2009 June 11 Swine flu update:

  • WHO on 11 June raised the pandemic alert level from phase 5 to 6, indicating a global pandemic outbreak
  • This will trigger drug makers to speed production of a swine flu vaccine and prompt governments to devote more money to containing the virus.
  • Although appearing less deadly than seasonal flu, experts worry the virus could mutate into a more lethal strain during the Southern Hemisphere’s coming flu season.
  • Experts also worry that poorer countries could be overwhelmed with cases they do not have the capacity to treat.
  • The last pandemic, the Hong Kong flu of 1968, killed 700,000 people worldwide. Ordinary flu kills 250,000 to 500,000 people each year

 

11 May 2009 brief from the World Health Organisation

For more information, we encourage our readers to read the WHO brief copied below and linked to here:
http://www.who.int/csr/disease/swineflu/assess/disease_swineflu_assess_20090511/en/index.html

This WHO brief of 11 May 2009 provides much useful background information for understanding expert concerns about the current new flu virus, particularly how it may affect the developing countries of the southern hemisphere, where the flu season is about to begin. These expert concerns include the following.

  1. The influenza A(H1N1) could mutate into a more lethal form in a subsequent wave of this pandemic, as the virus causing the 1918 pandemic flu did.
  2. Having not appeared in humans or animals before, scientists anticipate that pre-existing immunity to the virus will be low or non-existent, or largely confined to older population groups that have had flu vaccinations and therefore striking down more people of a younger age group, than viruses causing normal so-called 'seasonal flu'.
  3. This new flu virus, although as yet causing generally mild illness in the 29 countries outside Mexico where it has so far been confirmed, could cause severe illness in developing countries, particularly:
    • people suffering malnutrition
    • poor communities with inadequate health care
    • the greatly increased numbers of people now afflicted with chronic conditions such as heart disease and diabetes, conditions that can greatly increase the severity of illness this flu causes (although these chronic conditions afflicted mostly affluent populations until a few decades ago, a full 85% of people suffering them today live in low- and middle-income countries)
  4. As this new influenza A(H1N1) virus spreads to the southern hemisphere with the start of the flu season here, it may meet the H5N1 bird flu virus that is widely circulating among the poultry populations of some developing countries; no one knows how, under pressure of the new A(H1N1) human-to-human transmitted flu virus, the H5N1 bird-to-bird transmitted flu virus might change, including whether the latter, more lethal, bird flu virus could be helped to mutate into a form transmitted easily among people. (The more lethal H5N1 bird flu virus, now endemic in many areas, has thankfully to date been transmitted only rarely directly from person to person; almost all the people infected have received the virus from handling infected poultry, which has helped keep the virus from spreading widely among human populations.)

 

11 May 2009 Update

11 May 2009 Update As reported in Time Magazine this week (11 May 2009), ‘new research suggests that the WHO acted wisely in raising the pandemic alarm — and that the threat of H1N1 may not have passed. In a study released May 11 in the journal Science, researchers from Imperial College London, along with WHO staff and Mexican scientists, conclude that H1N1 is transmitted considerably easier than the regular seasonal flu and is about as deadly as the 1957 Asian flu, which killed about 2 million people worldwide. A World Bank study last year found that a pandemic of similar severity today might kill 14.2 million people around the world, and cut 2% from the global economy.’ 

 

7 May 2009 Update

As of 7 May 2009, there were 2,371 confirmed cases of swine flu in 24 countries and 46 deaths from this infection, all but 2 of the deaths occurring in Mexico. Scientists described 11 cases of Americans who were infected before the current outbreak with swine flus that partly matched the new epidemic strain that emerged in Mexico in March 2009. The first case was in December 2005. In articles published online in The New England Journal of Medicine, virologists from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) described those cases, most of them in young people in the Midwest who touched or were near pigs. All had a ‘triple reassortant’ virus that combined human, swine and avian flu genes. The H1N1 flu now spreading out from Mexico also has those genes, as well as genes from Eurasian swine. The CDC reports that the pandemic does not appear to be petering out, that we appear to be still on the upswing of the epidemic curve, and that only about 10% of those infected had a travel history to Mexico.

 The role of livestock scientists in the developing world
Livestock scientists have a vital role to play in helping to predict, prevent and control zoonotic diseases, which are all those transmitted between animals and people. Remarkably, zoonoses make up more than 60% of all human infectious diseases and more than 70% of all emerging infectious diseases. These diseases occur most frequently in Asia and Africa, where limited resources hinder both surveillance and response. The growing threat of emerging diseases such as Nipah and SARS, and re-emerging diseases such as Rift Valley Fever and avian influenza, has served as a wakeup call to animal health and public health services that their collaboration is necessary if these threats are to be minimized. There is increasing recognition that, for a number of zoonotic diseases, the most effective way to protect the health of the public is to control disease in the animal host.

The work of livestock scientists working in and for developing countries has special relevance in tackling these animal-human diseases, because within developing countries today, fast changes in food systems wrought by skyrocketing demand for, and production of, livestock foods is creating new niches and transmission pathways for pathogens, with unprecedented numbers of diseases emerging and re-emerging in recent decades. New tools and approaches for managing diseases in developing countries are urgently needed.

 

The animal-human disease interface
Most pathogens (61%) that affect people also affect animals; such shared infecting organisms and infections are known as ‘zoonotic’. A full 71% of all the world’s emerging infectious diseases are zoonotic, or transmissible between people and animals. In addition to swine flu, bird flu and SARS, these diseases include such devastating plagues as BSE (mad cow disease), HIV/AIDS, ebola and Rift Valley fever. The bugs that cause these diseases are notorious for their ability to evolve. Flu viruses, for example, can change both from severe to mild and from mild to severe.

Researchers at ILRI have been working at the livestock-human disease interface, supporting better integration of veterinary and public health surveillance programs, for three decades. ILRI’s particular interests are aspects of zoonotic diseases that impact the world’s poorest communities, where animal husbandry is a way of life and a central means of livelihood for more than half a billion people. ILRI and its partners, for example, make evidence-based assessments of the different impacts on the poor of employing different disease-control methods, thereby helping policymakers determine optimal pro-poor strategies for different regions and agricultural production systems of the developing world.

ILRI works with many research institutions within developing countries to better control zoonotic diseases at local, national and regional levels. It works with WHO and its international network of institutions to bolster disease surveillance. It works with the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) on participatory epidemiology, a grassroots approach to disease surveillance and control that is being successfully applied in the battle against bird flu in Indonesia. And it works with regional agencies such as the Africa Union / Inter-African Bureau for Animal Resources to improve laboratory testing and diagnosis of bird flu and other infectious livestock diseases.

ILRI and its partners are also investigating risk-based approaches that focus on key hazards and maximize benefits with available resources. With case studies in Africa and Asia, and concepts derived from ‘one medicine’ and ‘one health’, ILRI scientists argue that a ‘risk-analysis framework’ both can and should be extended to integrate risks to animal, human and environmental health.

The role of policy
ILRI also works with the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and other institutions on providing evidenced-based policy support so that we don’t fall into the trap of doing more harm than good in our efforts to control infections, particularly in poor countries which can least afford such mistakes.

Some of the most profound consequences of disease threats are economic rather than medical, with inappropriate policies devastating local and national economies. Egypt’s on-going culling of its entire population of some 300,000 pigs, for example, is reported to be reigniting religious and economic tensions, and may end up doing more harm than good. The pigs are kept not by Egypt’s majority Muslim population, which views the animals as unclean, but by Egypt’s Coptic Christians, many of whom maintain pigs on the rubbish heaps of shantytowns, where entire families pick out organic waste to feed their pigs. On the other hand, Egyptian authorities may be trying to prevent a repeat of events two years ago, when they were criticized for not responding swiftly enough to an outbreak of bird flu, which killed 26 people in the country, three in just the last month.

‘Misconceptions and inappropriate responses can spread quickly during the early stages of a new disease outbreak,’ says John McDermott, a veterinary epidemiologist and ILRI’s director of research. ‘This “swine flu” is spread by people, not by pigs,’ he said. ‘So most authorities are appropriately focusing their current attention on stopping the spread of swine flu among people.’ (Bird flu, in contrast, is spread by birds, so authorities focus on controlling that disease within poultry rather than human populations.)  This new swine flu virus, and our reactions to it, like the more lethal bird flu and SARS before it, should provide us with many lessons for the future.

Research gaps
We still know little about the nature of this new influenza virus strain, other than its genetic makeup is a ‘mashup’ of human, bird and pig elements (making the name ‘swine flu’ something of a misnomer we shall probably have to live with; ‘Spanish flu’ didn’t originate in Spain, but the name stuck anyhow). We don’t know yet when it first made the jump from pig to person, why it has been so deadly in Mexico but not elsewhere, or how virulent it will eventually prove to be. The pathogenicity of a virus can become milder or more severe over time. Until now, the influenza A(H1N1) virus thankfully has proven relatively mild, with most of those infected responding well to usual flu treatments and recovering.

Our ignorance of this new strain of swine flu virus is partly due to our neglect of animal health matters. In rich as well as poor countries, veterinary health care and research remains chronically under-funded. And there is increasing need for disease control policymakers, agents and researchers to collaborate at the interface of the human-and-animal-health sectors, exchanging up-to-date information on disease outbreaks and transmission.

Controlling emerging infectious diseases
 ‘To get serious about preventing new zoonotic infections from spreading,’ says Carlos Seré, director general of the Africa-based International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), ‘we need to get serious about veterinary resources. We need new ways to look for new pathogens infecting animals, new ways to assess those which may be most dangerous, and new ways to determine how they may be transmitted to people. We have just had a demonstration as to the danger of waiting for a new flu to emerge and begin spreading among people before trying to contain it.’

The influenza A(H1N1) virus is spreading rapidly because in our ever-shrinking, ever-globalizing world, pathogens are crossing species and borders with increasing ease. In such a world, says Seré, ‘we ignore veterinary health problems in developing countries at our peril.’ With high-quality collaboration among countries (rich and poor alike), scientific disciplines (e.g. socio-economics as well as genetics), and sectors (e.g. medical, veterinary, agricultural, environmental, wildlife), Seré argues, we can manage today’s emerging disease threats.
 
Because animals are the origin of most emerging diseases, they could play the same role that canaries did in the mines, in that case, alerting the coal workers to the presence of noxious gases or too little oxygen.

‘We should be spotting many infectious disease threats not in people, as we did in the case of this new flu virus,’ says Seré, ‘but rather in animal populations.’ That should give authorities more time to design and implement interventions to protect people from becoming infected. ‘But as we’ve seen in recent outbreaks of bird flu and Rift Valley fever, all too often it is people rather than animals that serve as our sentinels, sickening and dying after the disease has begun circulating in local livestock populations.’ That’s largely because in poor countries, livestock diseases tend to go unreported (it’s hard to tell one livestock disease from another in countries with spotty veterinary coverage) and/or underappreciated (people facing serious human health problems have little time to spare worrying about animal diseases), and/or ignored (it may be considered political suicide to report a disease outbreak that might have large economic consequences).

‘To find better ways of controlling human diseases,’ Seré concludes, ‘we’re going to have to find better ways of understanding and controlling diseases in both domesticated and wild animal populations. And we’re all going to have to work together, breaking down traditional barriers between organizations and scientific disciplines in the process. We need new thinking to tackle these new threats. And bringing diverse expertise together is the best way of staying on top of fast-evolving situations that threaten our global public health—as well as the well being of the world’s poorer livestock keeping communities.’

 

For more information contact

John Mc Dermott
Deputy Director General-ILRI
Nairobi, Kenya
Email: j.mcdermott@cgiar.org
Telephone: +254 20 422 3207

New study shows widespread and substantial declines in wildlife in Kenya’s Masai Mara

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Monthly surveys over 15 years link surge in human settlements near Mara Reserve with large losses of wildlife that have made Kenya popular safari destination

Populations of major wild grazing animals that are the heart and soul of Kenya’s cherished and heavily visited Masai Mara National Reserve—including giraffes, hartebeest, impala, and warthogs—have “decreased substantially” in only 15 years as they compete for survival with a growing concentration of human settlements in the region, according to a new study published today in the May 2009 issue of the British Journal of Zoology.

The study, analysed by researchers at the Nairobi-based International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) and led and funded by World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), is based on rigorous, monthly monitoring between 1989 and 2003 of seven “ungulate,” or hoofed, species in the Maasai Mara National Reserve, which covers some 1500 square kilometers in southwestern Kenya. Scientists found that a total of six species—giraffes, hartebeest, impala, warthogs, topis and waterbuck—declined markedly and persistently throughout the reserve.

The study provides the most detailed evidence to date on declines in the ungulate populations in the Mara and how this phenomenon is linked to the rapid expansion of human populations near the boundaries of the reserve. For example, an analysis of the monthly sample counts indicates that the losses were as high as 95 percent for giraffes, 80 percent for warthogs, 76 percent for hartebeest, and 67 percent for impala. Researchers say the declines they documented are supported by previous studies that have found dramatic drops in the reserve of once abundant wildebeest, gazelles and zebras.

“The situation we documented paints a bleak picture and requires urgent and decisive action if we want to save this treasure from disaster,” said Joseph Ogutu, the lead author of the study and a statistical ecologist at ILRI. “Our study offers the best evidence to date that wildlife losses in the reserve are widespread and substantial, and that these trends are likely linked to the steady increase in human settlements on lands adjacent to the reserve.”

Researchers found the growing human population has diminished the wild animal population by usurping wildlife grazing territory for crop and livestock production to support their families. Some traditional farming cultures to the west and southwest of the Mara continue to hunt wildlife inside the Mara Reserve, which is illegal, for food and profit.

The Mara National Reserve is located in the northernmost section of the Mara–Serengeti ecosystem in East Africa. The reserve is bounded by Tanzania’s Serengeti National Park to the south, Maasai pastoral ranches to the north and east, and crop farming to the west. The area is world-famous for its exceptional wildlife population and an annual migration of nearly two million wildebeest, zebra and other wildlife across the Serengeti and Mara plains.

Ogutu and his colleagues focused much of their attention on the rapid changes occurring in the large territories around the Mara Reserve known as the Mara ranchlands, which are home to the Maasai. Until recently, most Maasai were semi-nomadic herders—known for their warrior culture and colorful red toga-style dress—who co-existed easily with the wildlife in the region.

But over the last few decades, some Maasai have left their traditional mud-and-wattle homesteads, known as bomas, and gravitated to more permanent settlements—on the borders of the reserve. For example, Ogutu and his colleagues report that in just one of the ranchlands adjacent to the reserve—the Koyiaki ranch—the number of bomas has surged from 44 in 1950 to 368 in 2003, while the number of huts grew from 44 to 2735 in number. Their analysis found that the “abundance of all species but waterbuck and zebra decreased significantly as the number” of permanent settlements around the reserve increased.

“Wildlife are constantly moving between the reserve and surrounding ranchlands and they are increasingly competing for habitat with livestock and with large-scale crop cultivation around the human settlements,” Ogutu said. “In particular, our analysis found that more and more people in the ranchlands are allowing their livestock to graze in the reserve, an illegal activity the impoverished Maasai resort to when faced with prolonged drought and other problems,” he said.

In addition, the study warns that retaliatory killings of wildlife that break down fences, damage crops, degrade water supplies or threaten livestock and humans is “common and increasing” in the ranchlands. Ogutu said the various forces threatening wildlife in the ranchlands “could have grave consequences” for protecting wildlife in the reserve. That’s because, given the seasonal movements of the animals in and out of the reserve, on most days, most of the wildlife in the region regularly graze outside the protected reserve, in the ranchlands.

While not covered in their analysis, the researchers involved in the study are quick to point out that the Maasai’s transition to a more sedentary lifestyle has been driven partly by decades of policy neglect that left many Maasai with no choice but to abandon their more environmentally sustainable practice of grazing livestock over wide expanses of grasslands.

“The traditional livestock livelihoods of the Maasai, who rarely consume wild animals, actually helped maintain the abundance of grazing animals in East Africa, and where a pastoral approach to livestock grazing is still practiced, it continues to benefit wild populations,” said Robin Reid, a co-author of the paper who is now director of the Center for Collaborative Conservation at Colorado State University in the United States. “There appears to be a ‘tipping point’ of human populations above which former co-existence between Maasai and wildlife begins to break down. In the villages on the border of the Mara, this point has been passed, but large areas of the Mara still have populations low enough that compatibility is still possible.”

Previous research by Reid and Ogutu has shown that moderate livestock grazing in the Mara Reserve could also benefit wildlife. For example, many species of grazing wildlife avoid the reserve when the grass is tall in the wet season to avoid hiding predators and coarse, un-nutritious grass. Instead, wildlife tend to graze near traditional pastoral settlements where grass is nutritious and short because it’s used to feed pastoralist herds, and predators are clearly visible.

Reid added, “These apparently contradictory findings are now being used by local Maasai communities to address the loss of wildlife. They see that wildlife are lost when settlements are too numerous, but that moderate numbers of settlements can benefit wildlife.”

Maasai landowners are working together with the tourism companies to establish conservancies where they carefully manage the number of settlements and the number of livestock to achieve this balance. They also have the incentive to do so because the local community receives a share of the profits from tourism on their land.

Dickson Kaelo, a Maasai leader, works with tour companies and local communities to design these conservancies. During a recent experience at the new Olare Orok Conservancy, he found that wildlife initially flooded into the area when people removed their livestock and settlements. But soon, the grass grew tall and many wildlife left for the shorter grass near settlements beyond the conservancy.

“We know from thousands of years of history that pastoral livestock-keeping can co-exist with East Africa’s renowned concentrations of big mammals. And we look to these pastoralists for solutions to the current conflicts,” said Carlos Seré, Director General of ILRI. “With their help and the significant tourism revenue that the Mara wildlife generates, it is possible to invest in evidence-based approaches that can protect this region’s iconic pastoral peoples, as well as its wildlife populations.”

Another such initiative already under way, the Wildlife Conservation Lease Programme, is being implemented in the Kitengela rangelands adjacent to Nairobi National Park. The programme uses cash payments to encourage pastoralist families living on leased lands not to fence, develop or sell their acreage. This lease programme, which is supported by The Wildlife Foundation, Friends of Nairobi National Park (through reimbursement of the costs of predators killing livestock), the Kenya Wildlife Service, and the United States Agency for International Development (through land-use mapping and livestock marketing), has been successful in keeping rangelands open for wildlife and livestock grazing, while also providing Maasai families with an important source of income. ILRI believes the scheme should be broadened urgently to include more families here and should be introduced in other pastoral ecosystems and rangelands.

“We have evidence that the sharp declines of East Africa’s wildlife populations in recent years can be slowed and ecosystem crashes prevented by bettering the livelihoods of the Maasai and other pastoralists who graze their livestock near the region’s protected game parks,” concluded Seré. “Our work demonstrates that scientists, policymakers, and local communities can work together to build the technical means and adaptive capacity needed to keep this region’s pastoral ecosystems, and the people who depend on them, more resilient, even in the face of big changes.

Making research matter: Seven ways to link knowledge to action

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Influential PNAS chooses ILRI and partner research on 'linking knowledge with action' for its latest issue (31 March 2009).

Making research matter Institutionalization of systems approaches and scaling out of project results arguably remain our greatest challenges in more successfully linking knowledge with action resulting in sustainable poverty reduction.

Is that true? A new paper published by Patti Kristjanson and colleagues at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) in the prestigious Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in the US, thinks it is and argues for seven principles that might help us institutionalize and scale out what works best.

Researchers have traditionally focused on research outputs–articles, methods, technologies, trainings–rather than research outcomes. But it is by jointly defining with project partners the desired outcomes of a project–including changed behaviors, policies, and practices–that links between knowledge and action can be discerned and strengthened.

A group of 19 ILRI and partner researchers have analyzed a broad range of projects using a framework that discloses some helpful lessons. The synthesis of results published in PNAS is entitled ‘Linking International Agricultural Research Knowledge with Action for Sustainable Development’.

Patti Kristjanson, lead author of the paper, says, ‘This article describes ideas, principles and approaches I wish I had been exposed to when I began leading research teams tackling agricultural development and poverty issues across Africa 20 years ago’.

The researchers applied an innovation framework to sustainable livestock development research projects in Africa and Asia. The focus of these projects included pastoral systems, poverty and ecosystems services mapping, market access by the poor, fodder and natural resource management, and livestock parasite drug resistance. The framework arose from a series of propositions advanced at  a workshop organized by the Roundtable on Science and Technology for Sustainability of the US National Academies, led by Bill Clark who directs Harvard University’s Sustainability Science Program.  

So what helps to close gaps between knowledge and action? What helps take research knowledge beyond the realm of ‘knowledge for knowledge sake’ and convert it to changes in behaviour, practices, policies, institutions and uptake of new technologies?

“The framework is important because it is pragmatic and results oriented. In applying this framework we found that strategies key to closing gaps between knowledge and action include: combining different kinds of knowledge, learning and bridging approaches, strong and diverse partnerships that level the playing field, and building capacity to innovate and communicate” said Bill Clark, Harvey Brooks Professor of International Science, Public Policy and Human Development at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.

In examining what approaches, processes, tools and methods helped this very diverse range of project teams be successful in linking knowledge with action, the researchers found that 7 broad principles apply.

 How to ensure success or failure of getting your research into use

  1. Problem definition.
    DO: Define the problem to be solved in a collaborative and user-driven manner.
    HOW TO FAIL?: Separate yourselves (scientists who produce knowledge) from the decision-makers who use it.
  2. Program management.
    DO: Adopt a project orientation and organization and appoint dynamic leaders accountable for achieving user-driven goals.
    HOW TO FAIL?: Let your ‘study of the problem’ displace ‘creation of solutions’.
  3. Boundary spanning.
    DO: Use ‘boundary-spanning’ organizations, individuals and actions to help bridge gaps between research and research-user communities, construct informal arenas that foster producer-user dialogues, develop joint ‘rules of engagement’ and define products jointly.
    HOW TO FAIL?: Allow dominance by groups committed to the status quo.
  4. Systems integration.
    DO: Recognize that scientific research is just one ‘piece of the puzzle’ and apply systems-oriented strategies.
    HOW TO FAIL?: Don’t engage partners best positioned to help transform knowledge into useful strategies, policies, interventions or technologies.
  5. Learning orientation.
    DO: Design your project as much for learning as for knowing and to be frankly experimental, expect and embrace failures to learn from them throughout the project’s life.
    HOW TO FAIL?: Punish or fail to fund or reward risk-taking managers
  6. Continuity with flexibility.
    DO: Strengthen links between organizations and individuals operating locally, building strong networks and innovation/response capacity.
    HOW TO FAIL?: Leave development of communication strategies and products to the communication experts to do and development of research products for the researchers to do.
  7. Manage asymmetries of power.
    DO:  Level the playing field by generating hybrid, co-created knowledge.
    HOW TO FAIL?: Don’t deal with the often large (and largely hidden) asymmetries of power felt by stakeholders.

Boundary spanning
Boundary-spanning work takes place between two or more groups that work to different standards and objectives (e.g. basic scientists evaluated by peers versus action people who are validated by political processes). Boundary objects are joint creations at the interface of communities (e.g. models, maps, assessments, contracts, posters). Even more important than ‘boundary-spanning organizations’ are boundary-spanning individuals and efforts. Having said that, individuals work within institutional frameworks, and these need to be supportive of such work (or at the very least, not block it). We need to better understand what kinds of institutional change, if any, encourage or accelerate boundary work. As boundary-spanning activities, behaviors and approaches can be learned, developing courses and training materials in this area may profit research for development. These are environments where partners come together to solve problems and create joint outputs and reach agreement as to new rules of engagement that encourage and support creativity and innovation.

Tools and processes for boundary spanning. Examples of tools and processes that can help span boundaries efficiently and effectively via collaborative efforts include: outcome mapping (<http://www.outcomemapping.ca>), participatory impact pathway analysis (Douthwaite et al, 2003), farmer impact assessment workshops (Kristjanson et al, 2002), challenge dialogue process (<http://www.innovationexpedition.com>), policy evaluation framework (Cohan et al, 1994), adaptive management (www.adaptivemanagement.net), policy-focused assessment process (Schegara and Furrow 2001), joint fact-finding (<http://www.beyondintractability.org/>), value of information approach (Yokota and Thompson, 2004), institutional histories (<http://www.ciat.cgiar.org/riiweb/>), negotiation support (van Noordwijk et al, 2001), and appreciative inquiry (<http://www.cgiar-ilac.org>). ILRI’s community facilitator-researcher approach is another useful model (Nkedianye et al, 2008).

Systems integration
One way to produce both international public goods (those with significance across borders) and local poverty impacts is for research projects to engage local partners in multiple strategically selected sites to ensure the knowledge generated can be extrapolated more broadly. Does mission-oriented research always require a systems approach (e.g. involving public- and private-sectors, non-governmental organizations, community members, scientists, and policymakers)? All our case studies suggest the answer is yes.

There is certainly a role in sustainability science for both traditional, curiosity-driven research as well as for context-specific problem solving-so long as both are conducted within a larger framework that ensures rigor and usefulness. Many scientists fear that their adopting a systems approach will reduce their comparative advantage (e.g., in-depth knowledge of a disciplinary field) and lead to their spending all their time on partnership building and other processes. This risk is real. Our case studies all point to the need to use rigorous processes, ‘tried and tested’ tools, and world-class expertise in facilitating stakeholder engagement, building teams, and establishing ways to measure and communicate impacts and outcomes.

Learning orientation
All organizations interested in transforming themselves (or their self-perceptions) from knowledge producers to knowledge learners face challenges in doing so. Management must support a learning culture and provide incentives for adopting learning approaches, as it has at ILRI, where research performance criteria now include collaborative partnerships and communication outputs beyond scientific journal articles. But ILRI and other institutions ambitious to transform themselves into learning cultures need to go further in supporting and rewarding failures (as often encouraged in private sector research). Initiatives are needed to fund collaborative teams experimenting with different learning approaches to find those that help them link knowledge with action. A cultural and institutional environment that discourages risk taking and finds failures generally unacceptable adds considerably to the challenge of taking a learning-based approach. Convening the right team and committing to co-learning and co-producing ‘hybrid’ knowledge (e.g. a combination of indigenous and scientific knowledge) for action at the beginning of the project is absolutely critical to success. ILRI’s  pastoral project is a good example of how institutional ‘protection’ is needed to truly encourage innovative and risk-taking behavior; ILRI management and large external financial support effectively provided a safe space in the sense that the team was protected from external criticism concerning a livestock institute working on wildlife conservation issues.

The issue of improving incentives and rewards for individuals that are successful ‘boundary spanners’ arose in all the case studies. A critical challenge to institutionalizing boundary spanning functions within an organization is to do so while maintaining flexibility to adjust and organize according to constantly changing needs for specific information products. Many institutions are not eager to invest in boundary functions (e.g. workshops, forums, reports) that are perceived to be not a core part of their mission, nor do government or private funders want to invest in the creation of freestanding boundary organizations. We also saw ‘informal communities’ of actors who play no explicit role in the system-often making one-on-one connections between explicit actors who otherwise might not meet-creating key relationships. Because of their ‘stealth’ nature, these are very difficult to identify, yet can be important for successful boundary-spanning, and the links from knowledge to action, to occur.

Conclusion
We believe that projects aiming to improve livelihoods in sustainable ways will increase their likelihood of being successful if they incorporate most if not all of these seven propositions. The working paper explores some of the tools, processes, approaches and strategies that can help research teams apply these principles.

The good news is that these ILRI-partner results indicate that boundary-spanning work is most effective when it is regularized yet flexible and when it enlists the support of informal communities of actors. More research is needed on what kinds of institutional change are likely to encourage and accelerate boundary work, what kind of incentives are needed to encourage individuals to pursue such work, and what kinds of courses and training materials will build capacity in this area.

References
Cohan D, Stafford RK, Scheraga JD, Herrod S (1994) The Global Climate Policy Evaluation Framework. Air and Waste Management Association: Pittsburg, PA. <http://sedac.ciesin.org/mva/iamcc.tg/articles/DC1994/DC1994.html>

Douthwaite B, Kuby T, van de Fliert E, Schulz S (2003) Impact Pathway Evaluation: An approach for achieving and attributing impact in complex systems. Agricultural Systems 78: 243-265.

Kristjanson P et al. (2008) Linking international agricultural research knowledge with action for sustainable poverty alleviation: What works? Joint Center for International Development and International Livestock Research Institute Working Paper, CID Faculty Working Paper 08-173 (Cambridge: Harvard University CID and ILRI) <http://www.cid.harvard.edu/cidwp>

Kristjanson P, Place F, Franzel S, Thornton P (2002) Assessing research impact on poverty: The importance of farmers’ perspectives. Agricultural Systems 72:73-92.

Nkedianye D et al. (2008) Linking knowledge with action and alleviating poverty sustainably using researcher-community-facilitators to span boundaries: Lessons from the Maasai in East Africa. Joint Center for International Development and International Livestock Research Institute Working Paper, CID Faculty Working Paper 08-174 (Cambridge: Harvard University CID and ILRI). <http://www.cid.harvard.edu/cidwp/ >

Schegara J D, Furlow J (2001) From Assessment to Policy: Lessons Learned from the U.S. National Assessment. Human and Ecological Risk Assessment, 7(5):1227-1246.

van Noordwijk M, Tomich T, Verbist B (2001) Negotiation support models for integrated natural resource management in tropical forest margins. Conservation Ecology 5(2):21.  <http://www.consecol.org/vol5/iss2/art21/>

Yokota F, Thompson K (2004) Value of information literature analysis: A review of applications in health risk management. Medical Decision Making, Vol.24, No.3:187-298.

Women in science: Sheila Ommeh

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The first in a series of articles during the month of March celebrating the achievements of women in science
Each year around the world, International Women’s Day (IWD) is celebrated on March 8. Hundreds of events occur not just on this day but throughout March to mark the economic, political and social achievements of women. Organizations, governments and women’s groups around the world choose different themes each year that reflect global and local gender issues.

Meet Sheila Ommeh
Sheila Ommeh is a thirty two year old PhD student from Kenya working on chicken genetics at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI).

Ommeh grew up in her early years on the slopes of Mount Elgon in western Kenya where indigenous chicken is a popular staple food for the rural community. She observed that local breeds are reared by small scale farmers who are mostly women and children.

Unfortunately, viral diseases such as Newcastle disease and the looming threat of bird flu have threatened livelihoods leading to malnourishment, hunger and poverty. Ommeh has seen the importance of having disease resistant breeds that may help in poverty alleviation. Her current work on chicken genetics is helping her to achieve this.

Currently her PhD is focusing on the study of candidate genes in different chicken populations for resistance, tolerance or susceptibility to chicken viral diseases such as avian influenza and Newcastle disease. She is ambitious to adopt a genetic control towards these viral diseases that currently do not have an effective cure or vaccine.

‘One of my longer term scientific goals is to reduce Africa’s hunger and poverty through a genetically improved chicken breed that will be resistant to disease and easily adopted by the rural community’ says Ommeh.
Ommeh wins AWARD
African women are underrepresented in agricultural research institutions. While African women produce 60 to 80 per cent of the crops that feed their continent, they make up less than 20 per cent of Africa’s agricultural researchers. Many believe women need to have a strong voice not just on the farm, but also in the research laboratories and field sites where new options are being developed and tested to help smallholders crank up their food production.

In August 2008, Ommeh was among 60 African women scientists selected from more than 900 candidates in nine countries to receive an “African Women in Agricultural Research & Development” (AWARD) Fellowship for 2008-2010. AWARD is funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and managed by the Gender and Diversity (G&D) program of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR).

AWARD fellowships aim to increase the skills, visibility and contributions to research and development of women working in critically important areas of agricultural science in Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Nigeria, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia.

‘This opportunity came at the right time in my career,” says Ommeh.

‘It will prepare me for post-PhD challenges. I hope to access a myriad of learning opportunities.

‘I’m confident I’ll gain useful communications skills, among others, from this mentorship program.

‘One of the personal things I am ambitious to achieve is a work-life balance, which is important for both me and my family,” says Ommeh, a mother of one.

Contacts
Sheila Ommeh
International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI)
Nairobi, KENYA
Email: s.ommeh@cgiar.org
Telephone: +254 (20) 422 3328

Markets that work: Making a living from livestock

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ILRI Annual Report 2007 is now available for download. Read the foreword by the chair of ILRI board of trustees Uwe Werblow and ILRI's director general Carlos Seré.
 

Foreword

This is a time of intense change, with volatile food prices, a near meltdown of financial markets and the continuing growing threats of climate change and emerging diseases.

Research by the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) and its partners is helping to address these issues by working at the intersection of small-scale livestock production systems with these new global forces. We see strong growth in demand for research into dynamic markets for livestock products; the growing competing demands for human food, animal feed and biofuels; the growing environmental concerns about the expansion of livestock production; bird flu and other emerging zoonotic diseases; and the impact of climate change on animal agriculture in developing countries.

Livestock is one of the fastest growing sub-sectors in developing countries, where it already accounts for a third of GDP and is predicted to become the most important agricultural sub-sector by 2020 in terms of added value. We view market-led pro-poor growth, the topic of this year’s annual report, not as a silver bullet that will solve all the ills of the livestock sector in poor countries but rather as one of several pillars of livestock development. The livestock markets and trading systems of developing countries are as yet remarkably poorly studied and understood. What we do know is that they are far more complex and dynamic and have far higher through-put than is commonly assumed.

The increasing demand for livestock products is creating opportunities for improving the welfare of millions of poor people who depend on livestock for their livelihoods, but changes in production, procurement, processing and retailing of food, along with environmental and food safety concerns, erosion of animal genetic resources and the threat of emerging infectious diseases, threaten the potential of the poor to benefit from the on-going livestock revolution. With these new challenges, we believe livestock researchers must find new ways of working, including adopting innovation systems and valuechain approaches to their work.

The role of research is never greater than during times of change. With our research investors and partners, we continue to look for ways to adapt ourselves to continual change while seeking technical, institutional and policy solutions to complex problems. We continue to support national work to build indigenous livestock research capacity and to develop institutional arrangements that encourage continual learning. And we continue to look for effective ways to integrate research results and share research-based knowledge with those who need it most. We thank those investors and partners who continued to make this all possible in 2007.

Uwe Werblow                                          Carlos Seré
Chairman of the Board of Trustees              Director General

Download ILRI Annual Report 2007

 

Markets that work: Making a living from livestock (3MB PDF File)

New dual-purpose sorghum: Food for people and livestock

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New varieties of food-feed sorghum are meeting the basic needs of India?s 208 million crop-livestock farmers, as well as feeding its growing human population.
 

India, Andhra PradeshThroughout the tropics, farm animals are kept underweight and underproductive due to lack of feed. This constraint is stopping some 600 million poor farmers from meeting a fast-rising global demand for milk and meat. But a new partnership, developing dual-purpose food-feed sorghum varieties is helping to meet the basic needs of India’s farmers and leading to similar work in other crops and other countries.

The single most important ruminant  feed resource on many of the small crop-livestock farms of Asia and Africa is not grass but rather the stalks, leaves and other remains of crop plants after harvesting. In India, for example, 44% of the feed annually sustaining all the country’s cattle, buffalo, goats, sheep and camel populations is made up of such crop ‘wastes’. The rest comes from planted forages and a shrinking area of pastures and other common lands. Expensive concentrates—the mainstay of livestock production in rich countries—are used only very occasionally.

While crop residues (straw and stover) have become a main feed for farm animals of the South, crop breeders until recently continued to focus solely on increasing grain yields. But a research partnership between India’s National Research centre for Sorghum (NRCS), the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) and ILRI is redressing this oversight in India’s all-important sorghum crop, grown on nearly 10,000,000 hectares on the country. The research partners incorporated fodder quality traits in India’s crop breeding trials and in doing so, led breeders to identify sorghum varieties with high yields of both grain and stover as well as improved stover quality.

 Partners in the sorghum food-feed collaboration

India’s National Research Centre for Sorghum (NRCS) leads the All-India Coordinated Sorghum Improvement Program mandated to test and release new cultivars. It also assesses the socio-economic importance of sorghum-based livelihoods.
Website:  http://www.nrcsorghum.res.in

The International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) provided conventional and molecular sorghum breeding, global crop economics and assessments of the impacts of crop interventions for the poor.
Website: http://www.icrisat.org


The International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) conducted the livestock nutrition work and provided expertise in global livestock economics and assessments of the impacts of livestock interventions for the poor.
Website: http://www.ilri.org


Summary of results from the sorghum trials
The research partnership began in 1999 by assessing the potential impacts on India’s smallholder livestock productivity of planting sorghum and millet varieties with genetically enhanced stover fodder quality and quantity. Remarkably, results indicated that a 1% increase in just one livestock productivity-related parameter—stover digestibility—would result in increases in milk, meat and draught power outputs ranging from 6-8%. The net present value of the research was estimated to range from US$42-208 million, with predicted high rates of return to the research investment of 28-43% and corresponding high benefit:cost ratios of 15 to 69:1.

ILRI then proceeded to establish facilities for animal nutrition studies using large and small ruminants at ICRISAT’s Patancheru headquarters, close to the NRCS. These facilities enabled the research partners to make a stepwise evaluation of the relationships between fodder from different sorghum lines and livestock productivity—and to find a simple way of assessing these. Animal experimentation, while itself impractical as a routine screening tool, quickly laid a sound basis for developing and validating simple laboratory assessment methods and for quantifying potential impacts on livestock productivity.

In 2001 work began with combined feeding and laboratory trials of stover obtained from a wide range of sorghum varieties and hybrids. The trials simulated diverse on-farm circumstances, including those where stover is scarce, abundant and supplemented with other forages, because fodder qualities depend on a farm’s total feed resources. Across India’s great drylands, for example, where insufficient feed prevents animals from eating until they have satisfied their appetites, a fodder trait for ‘voluntary feed intake potential’ is likely to be irrelevant while another for ‘feed digestibility’ is critically important.

Sorghum varieties were investigated for their morphological characteristics and structure (leaf blade:leaf sheath:stem proportions, plant height, stem diameter, residual green leaf area), chemical constituents (protein, fiber, sugar) in the stover and in vitro fermentation characteristics (true and apparent digestibility, rate of fermentation, partitioning of fermentation products). Results showed that fodder quality traits measured in the laboratory could be used to predict and account for at least 80% of the variation in relevant livestock productivity traits, such as digestible organic matter intake and nitrogen balance.

Traits were chosen also for the ease with which they could be measured (e.g. plant height, stem diameter) and/or be accurately predicted by near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS). Importantly, use of NIRS technology allowed all the partners in the project, including those with no livestock feeding facilities, easy access to developed and validated NIRS prediction equations and consequently phenotyping for stover fodder quality capability. NRCS staff seconded to ILRI’s livestock nutritional facilities on ICRISAT’s Patancheru campus used the facilities and NIRS equations to comprehensively assess all newly submitted sorghum cultivars.

Breaking new ground in food-feed crops
Identification of superior dual-purpose food-plus-feed sorghum varieties is now helping India close its livestock feed gap as well as feed its growing human population. By increasing the country’s livestock productivity, this research is improving the livelihoods of some 100 million mixed crop-livestock farmers —and doing so in ways those small farmers should be able to sustain over the longer term. This partnership also led the way for similar work on millet, groundnut, rice, maize and cowpea and new collaborations are about to begin on wheat and various leguminous crops.

By generating superior dual-purpose sorghum varieties suited to India’s millions of smallholder farmers, this collaborative research has been path-breaking in demonstrating that traits for stover fodder quality and quantity can be incorporated into existing breeding programs to improve grain yields—and with minimum investments in equipment, staff and labour and minimum transaction costs for the collaborating institutions.

It further offers a practical two-step approach to development of food-feed crops. First, exploit dual-purpose traits in existing cultivars by complementing traditional crop improvement programs with information about the quantity and quality of expected yields of crop residues for livestock feed. Second, target dual-purpose crops for genetic enhancement. The first approach, comparatively cheap and logistically feasible, promises quick benefits for resource-poor farmers. The second, more strategic, approach requires more investments and benefits farmers later and over the longer term. In a world of scarce and rapidly diminishing land, water, fodder and other natural resources, both approaches merit the world’s attention.


ILRI Top story 22 August 2007 
Sweet sorghum: utilizing every 'drop'

 

Contacts
For further information about this project contact:
Michael Blummel
ILRI c/o ICRISAT
Patancheru 502 234AP India
Email: m.blummel@cgiar.org

For further information about ILRI’s activities in Asia contact:

 

Iain Wright
ILRI’s regional representative in Asia
Email: i.wright@cgiar.org

 

A new approach for safer food in informal markets

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Women play the major role in food supply in developing countries, but too often their ability to feed their families safely is compromised; one outcome is high levels of foodborne disease.
Millions of smallscale farmers in Africa, mostly women, supply the surging demand for livestock products. Most meat, milk, eggs, and fish is sold in informal markets where food safety regulation and inspection has failed and alternatives have not emerged. The result is high levels of foodborne disease amongst poor consumers and limited access to higher value markets for smallscale producers.

Safer foods benefits both producers and consumers
A new approach for safer food in informal marketsSafer livestock products can generate both health and wealth for the poor, but attaining safe food and safe food production in developing countries requires a radical change in food safety management. Now you can get quality food online and use coupons and discounts from Raise. International food safety standards are not always appropriate to developing countries due to lack of resources, infrastructure and incentives to encourage and monitor implementation.

 

In response to the problem of unsafe food in informal markets, the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) and partners have been conducting research on livestock market chains in urban Uganda, Kenya, and Nigeria to better understanding the benefits and harms of livestock-keeping and how associated health risks can be better managed. A report on work in progress, entitled ‘Participatory risk assessment: a new approach for safer food in vulnerable African communities, was published in a special issue of Development in Practice.

Women are key players in food supply
A new approach for safer food in informal marketsILRI epidemiologist, food safety expert and lead author of the paper, Delia Grace says, ‘In rich countries eating out is a sign of wealth, but in developing countries it is often a sign of poverty. Buying ‘street’ food makes sense for the poor since it is often cheaper than buying cooking fuel and raw ingredients. Millions of poor people are dependent on these informal markets, where both raw and cooked animal source foods are prepared and sold.
‘Most of the food sold in these traditional markets is produced and prepared by women. It is a huge market but difficult to quantify or regulate. As a result, it tends to be ignored. But finding new approaches for making foods sold in informal markets safer will benefit both poor producers and poor consumers’ says Grace.

Food safety management needs to be adapted to local contexts
Risk-based approaches that take into account the extent of harm caused by food-borne disease to consumers and the likelihood of its happening are current international best practice. But these approaches are complex and do not work in informal settings in developing countries where most of the poor buy and sell their food.

A new approach for safer food in informal marketsRecognising the key role women play in food preparation and supply and the need to involve them in developing workable food safety solutions, the researchers developed a gender-sensitive participatory method. Their pro-poor risk-based approach to food safety contrasts with top-down hazard-based approaches that have failed to work in the past. The researchers have called their new approach for assessing and managing health risks associated with livestock ‘participatory risk analysis’.

ILRI economist and co-author, Tom Randolph, says ‘Studies that look for disease in informal markets will inevitably find it; the corollary is an enormous burden of sickness borne by poor consumers, as well as blocked access for poor farmers to emerging higher value outlets such as supermarkets.

 

‘Risk-based approaches to food safety need to be adapted to the context of informal markets. So we are focusing on the food producers – who are mostly women – and bringing communities and food safety implementers together to analyse local food safety problems and develop workable solutions.

‘We are convinced that integrating risk assessment with participatory methodologies and gender analysis is a promising solution to the problem of unsafe foods in informal markets.

‘And generating credible evidence is critical to better understanding and better managing food safety in developing countries’ concludes Randolph.

 

Earlier risk-based approach to raw milk management in Kenya

Food borne disease is often dismissed as a mild inconvenience. The symptoms, usually an upset stomach, vomiting and/or diahorrea, are short-lived and people recover quickly and fully. But foodborne illnesses are in fact very serious. Some can cause permanent irreversible damage and others can kill. Children, the elderly and sick are particularly vulnerable. Diahorrea, a common symptom of many foodborne illnesses, is a leading cause of death in children under five in developing countries. Safe food handling and storage practices reduce the risks of food poisoning, while cooking foods at high temperatures can kill bacteria that cause serious food related illnesses. Safer food benefits all consumers, particularly the poorest and most vulnerable.

Brucellosis is a zoonotic disease (transmitted from infected animals to people). It is commonly transmitted by consuming food harbouring brucella organisms, usually raw/unpasteurized milk or products derived from untreated milk including yoghurt and cheese. Women infected with brucellosis can also transfer the bacteria to their babies through breast milk. Symptoms of brucellosis include fever, headache, sweating, joint pain and fatigue. If left untreated, symptoms can last up to a year.

Earlier smallholder dairy research conducted by ILRI and partners showed that although some raw milk sold by smallscale traders in Kenya did contain brucella, the risk of brucellosis was negligible as it is common practice across Kenya to boil all milk before drinking it. Boiling milk achieves the same results as pasteurization – harmful bacteria commonly found in raw milk, such as brucella and E. coli, are destroyed and the health risk to consumers is low.

This is an example of how focusing on risk (likely harm to the consumer) comes up with a very different conclusion than focusing on hazard (presence of bacteria in milk. By taking cultural/consumer practices into account, ILRI and partners generated evidence about the ‘real’ risks to public health and helped smallscale traders to continue selling their raw milk. The researchers also helped small traders raise their quality and safety standards by providing them with training and support to improve their food hygiene practices (read the food hygiene requirements here) and achieve quality accreditation within the formal market.

If hazard-based food safety standards that look for the presence of pathogens had been applied, raw milk would have been considered a serious health risk. But the alternative pro-poor risk-based approach was a win-win for Kenyan traders dependent on raw milk for their income and poor Kenyan consumers dependent on raw milk as a cheap and nourishing food source.

Further information: http://www.smallholderdairy.org

Citation
D. Grace, T. Randolph, J. Olawoye, M. Dipelou and E. Kang’ethe (2008) Participatory risk assessment: a new approach for safer food in vulnerable African communities. Development in Practice. Vol. 18, No.4, 611-618
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09614520802181731

Further Information Contact:
Delia Grace, Veterinary epidemiologist, ILRI
Email: d.grace@cgiar.org
Telephone: +254 (20) 422 3460

Tom Randolph
Economist, ILRI
Email: t.randolph@cgiar.org
Telephone: +254 (20) 422 3067

Helping Asia’s dairy farmers take advantage of rising demand and prices for dairy products

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FAO workshop and strategy say fair prices, appropriate policies and strategic investments and partnerships are key for the sector's development.
 

A report by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in April 2008 concludes that policy decisions impinging on the smallholder dairy sector should be taken with a broad understanding of their direct and indirect implications on rural as well as urban populations.

The report indicates that the recent control of milk prices in several Asian countries could be counter-productive to supporting the dairy incomes of smallholders and rural development generally. With prices at record levels for both dairy outputs (milk) and inputs (feeds, energy costs), fixed and administered prices tend to hold back big as well as small dairy producers from responding quickly to the changing price signals.

Helping Asia's dairy farmersPrice controls particularly hurt dispersed smallholders, who often lack social networks to help them find and sell to milk collectors offering the highest prices. On the other hand, equitable and remunerative prices for farm-gate milk encourages smallholders to adopt improved and sustainable technologies and management systems that improve their milk quality as well as quantity.


The recent and rapid escalation of commodity prices is the perfect environment in which to test what policies are most conducive to the development of the agricultural sector. Low food prices over the past 20 years led to an underinvestment in agriculture, particularly in smallholder dairying, which, unlike rice and other staples of food security, has been a neglected and relatively unsupported area of research and development.

Fair pricing policies, says FAO, are the first step to this sector’s development.

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Helping Asia's dairy farmersThe sudden rise in dairy prices that took the market by surprise in late 2006 was due to the elimination by the European Union of subsidized dairy exports as well as to drought in many large dairy-product exporting countries and higher feed prices worldwide. Throughout 2007, prices for dairy products rose faster than those for any other agricultural commodity group, finally reaching a plateau in late 2007 and abating only in early 2008.
This recent increase in dairy prices potentially offers an opportunity for hundreds of millions of poor, and in many cases, landless, smallholder dairy producers to benefit from these structural, or permanent, shifts in the global demand and supply of dairy products.

This is particularly true for Asia, where growth in both milk production and consumption has been the strongest in the world; nearly 80% of the 238 million tonnes of milk produced in 2007 was supplied by farmers with 1 to 5 cows.

While developing countries in Asia and elsewhere consume only 40% of global milk production, these countries import nearly three-quarters of global shipments of dairy products, including 80% of milk powder exports from developed countries. With the world’s largest net trade milk deficit, Asia is projected to increase its milk production by 3% a year over the next decade, slower than the previous decade but still double annual global growth rates.

This is supported by expectations that, although dairy product prices have been easing in the first half of 2008, increased prices are here to stay. Commodity projections by both FAO and the Food and Agriculture Policy Research Institute indicate that milk prices over the next decade will remain 50% higher than historical averages.

Smallholder farmers have the capacity to respond quickly to higher milk prices because of their ample scope for rapid yield increases. Current average milk yields in developing countries are just one-fifth that in developed countries because most smallholder farmers feed their dairy animals well below their potential.

With enabling pricing policies and technical support to producers on improved feeding, on-farm management and reducing spoilage, milk yields in poor countries could increase dramatically to meet the rising global demand, bringing millions out of poverty in the process.

How policymakers in region have responded to higher commodity prices
To date, most of the policy responses in Asia to escalating food prices have focused on rice, maize, wheat and other food staples. Some countries, such as India in 2007, briefly limited dairy product exports to ensure domestic price stability. Many importing countries reduced import tariffs on both livestock products and feed inputs and many put in place price caps on milk and other dairy products.

 

 Asian policy responses to escalating food prices

• China imposes price caps on meat, milk, eggs, grain and edible oils (Jan 2008)
• China subsidizes meat consumption for the poor (for 6 months)
• Thailand imposes price controls on dairy products, chicken, eggs, beef and pork.
• Pakistani cities set retail fluid milk prices below the cost of production.
• Thailand reduces the tariff rate for soybean meal from 4 to 0% to reduce the costs of  feeding local animals.
• Indonesia eliminates import duties on soybeans (for 6 months).
• Indonesia subsidizes tempe and tofu producers.
• Korea cuts import duties on corn and soybeans.
• China reduces the tariff rate for soybeans from 3 to 1% for 3 months (Oct 2007–Mar 2008).
• Indonesia takes a  series of measures to stabilize food prices.
• India abolishes the import duty on corn (Jan–Dec 2007)
• India bans the export of pulses (Jun 2006–Mar 2008).
• Vietnam reduces tariffs on meat, offal, eggs, milk products, vegetable oils and animal  feeds by 30–50% and reduces the import tax rate for corn used for animal feed from 5 to  2%.


The different policy responses and the way they are implemented alter economic incentives for the different actors along the dairy marketing chain and have differential impacts on food security in urban and rural areas. Policy responses that seek to ensure food security and access by controlling markets, such as through setting ceiling prices, usually lower prices, preventing potential gains from being realized, and hurt rural livelihoods.

The dairy sector in most developed countries is highly supported through regulated prices and high tariffs to ensure stable and high incomes for dairy producers. This is not the case in developing countries, where dairy policies are less prevalent and price controls are often used to ensure low prices for urban consumers.

A recent FAO review on lessons learned in smallholder dairy development reveals that government interventions in the dairy sector—particularly price policies that create or remove incentives for producers to increase yields—strongly impact rural livelihoods and food security for better or worse, as well as, importantly, the investment climate for the sector.

A key question for policymakers is to what extent the international dairy prices are being transmitted into local economies. FAO’s investigation of price movements in a few countries in Asia identifies some of the factors conditioning the transmission of the prices. Domestic policies influence market signals while the costs of doing business determines the extent to which individual producers respond to those market signals.

The first determinants of how international prices translate into local prices are exchange rate movements and a country’s net trade position. While world dairy prices have increased substantially in recent years, these have been accompanied and partly caused by a substantial depreciation of the US dollar against many currencies.

The exchange rate factor means domestic prices don’t necessarily rise as much as international prices. The impacts of international prices on local prices are highest in countries with stable currencies, such as Indonesia and Bangladesh. In countries whose currencies have been appreciating, milk importers such as the Philippines have benefited from cheaper imports while milk exporters such as Thailand have suffered from reduced export earnings.

Helping Asia's dairy farmers

Prices of dairy products throughout Asia have increased over the past two years. From 2006 to 2008, farm gate prices of fluid milk rose from 10% (Malaysia) to 14% (Nepal) to 30% (Vietnam) to 69% (Mongolia). In the Philippines, which, after China, imports more dairy products than any other Asian nation, the government stopped all support for dairy activities two decades ago, deciding to import all its dairy requirements. While the government has accorded the sector more interest in recent years, its low tariffs (1–3%) on dairy imports, instituted to assure adequate supplies of milk products for its urban consumers, encouraged milk imports.

Despite these challenges to Philippino dairy producers, the smallholder sector, comprising some 96% of the dairy farming sector, has managed to compete favourably in the open market, due to its enterprise-focused approach to dairy development and the laissez-faire pricing policy, which allows markets to determine prices. The rise in international milk prices was transferred into the Philippino wholesale market for milk powder with only a slight delay (despite the peso’s appreciating 33% against the value of the US dollar, making imports less expensive). And farm gate prices, ranging from US$0.30–0.33 from 2001 to 2006 have risen to the current range of $0.40–0.49.

Sri Lanka has also kept tariffs low on imports of dairy products to keep milk, considered ‘essential’ for food security and nutrition, affordable. As a result, price trends in international markets are transmitted almost fully to the domestic market. With relatively stable exchange rates and imports making up 72% of domestic consumption, one could assume that high international prices would lead to higher prices for local suppliers.

However, pricing structures largely determined by a state-owned milk processing company mean the higher international prices translated into nearly 50% rises in packages of locally sold whole milk powder but only a 25% increase (US$0.20–0.25 per litre) in farm gate fluid milk prices in 2007.

Sri Lankan milk producers have thus not been given sufficient incentives to invest in their dairying despite the fact that the country’s total milk collection increased by 13% in 2004 due to higher prices being paid then for milk. Also constraining incentives to engage in the Sri Lankan dairy sector are high production costs that mean that a farmer needs to keep at least three cows and produce at least 15 litres a day to earn a reasonable income from dairy.

As Asia’s fifth largest producer, Pakistan accounts for nearly 13% of global production, most of which is sourced from the country’s 8.4 million  dairying households owning an average of 1 to 10 cows and most of which is consumed within the country.

Dairy’s contribution to Pakistan domestic product surpasses all the major crops and the sector has grown by more than 3% annually over the past decade, mostly due to expanding numbers of dairy animals producing low yields.

Over 2007, prices for fluid milk rose from US$0.31 to %$0.37 per litre. The price setting, however, which in Pakistan is done at district level, doesn’t take into consideration the rising costs of feed and other imports.

In both Pakistan and Sri Lanka, these prices have risen about 8 to 10% per year. Some municipalities are setting price ceiling below the cost of production. So while official milk prices in Karachi are set at RS32 per litre, black market rates in peak season often reach RS42 per litre. In response, farmers reduce or stop making new investments in their dairying, particularly their purchase of buffalo calves, whose price has risen 30–40%, a fact that may spell shortages of milk and cows in future.

Strategically positioning Asia to benefit from growing opportunities:
The Asian Smallholder Dairy Development Strategy and Investment Plan 
To facilitate a timely response to this new and big opportunity for the poor, FAO and the Animal Production and Health Commission for Asia and the Pacific (APHCA), with the financial support of Common Fund for Commodities, initiated development of a regional strategy for dairy development. They started by holding a workshop in Chiang Mai, Thailand, 26–29 February 2008, attended by over 50 key policymakers and senior executives of some of the largest dairy companies in Asia. Participants included regional experts from 18 Asian countries and from the Africa-based International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI).

At a time of record-high international dairy prices, the workshop dairy experts agreed that Asia needs concerted regional collaboration to enable its tens of millions of small dairy producers to derive the full benefits from the dairy value chain through greater productivity, better milk quality and maximum market access.

To help unleash dairy’s potential to transform rural economies in Asia, workshop members and government and private-sector representatives pledged to:
• Strengthen the ability of smallholders, who currently account for 70% of regional milk production,  to supply and market quality milk to the region;
• Actively participate in a regional dairy information and exchange network that will be a channel of best practices on smallholder dairy development;
• Support the development of national action plans that would build on the pillars of the regional strategy.

In response to the outcome of the workshop, FAO committed itself, under the umbrella of APHCA, to the immediate development of a knowledge networking system on small-scale dairy development, addressing such issues as production, marketing, and processing. The results of this workshop were further elaborated the following April into an Asian Smallholder Dairy Development Strategy and Investment Plan, which has as its objective: ‘a glass of good-quality, safe Asian milk per day for every Asian child and more efficient, productive and profitable dairy food chains providing dairy producers with higher earnings.’

In November 2008, ILRI’s Markets Theme director, Steve Staal, will participate in a follow-up workshop in Bangkok with about 30 other experts, including policymakers, researchers, private sector agents and global development thinkers on dairy development and chain analysis. This informal expert consultation aims to build a body of practical knowledge on enabling policies for development of smallholder dairy. It will feed into and support the broader objectives of FAO’s regional strategy for smallholder dairy development in Asia, which is to promote investment into Asia’s dairy sector.

FAO has been working in many countries in the region to help develop national training centers for small-scale dairy processing and genetic improvement of dairy cattle. Like FAO, ILRI strongly supports pro-poor dairy policy and development. ILRI has been working to enhance smallholder dairying in Africa and Asia since early 1990s through collaborative R&D projects with national partners. ILRI’s central interest is the traditional ‘raw’, or unpasteurized, milk and dairy markets of these regions, which are huge and booming. Traditional markets make up an extraordinary 98% of total milk sold in Tanzania, 90% in Uganda, and 86% in Kenya; in South Asia, these informal markets constitute 98% of milk sold in Pakistan, 76% in India and 40% in Sri Lanka. The dairy products traded in these informal markets are often liquid raw or soured milk and traditionally processed products such as the ubiquitous milk sweets of India.

ILRI’s collaborative smallholder dairy projects are looking for win-win options that enhance the welfare of small farmers and market agents while improving the nutritional status of poor households and enriching exhausted soils on smallholder mixed crop-and-livestock farms.
A smart way to meet this triple bottom line is to pay scrupulous attention to already vibrant local dairy markets—to what products local people are already selling and buying. As ILRI veterinary researcher Nick Hooten says:

‘What all of us tend to vastly underestimate is the huge and growing size and viability of local dairy markets in developing countries, with their traditional products designed for local preferences rather than Western appetites. These local markets should be our starting point for enlarging dairy pathways out of poverty.’

A collaboration path toward action
Embarking on such an ambitious initiative requires collaboration and cooperation between governments, institutions and other local and regional partners. FAO and ILRI have a long history of working together on smallholder dairy development and a regional umbrella supporting dairy development in Asia necessitates partnerships that focus on merging research results into development action in the field.

A recent ILRI/FAO publication, Dairy Development for the Resource Poor—A Comparison of Dairy Policies and Development in South Asia and East Africa—outlines an  agenda for pro-poor dairy policy and development. The authors suggest that, generally speaking, dairy development policies that build on traditional production systems, with a particular focus on employment generation and food safety and quality, are likely to be pro-poor. Solid knowledge of policies and their impacts on the structure of the dairy sector throughout the region will provide the stage for future initiatives.

ILRI and FAO look forward to collaborating with interested partners in the region to further the goal of ensuring that every day Asian children have access to at least one glass of Asian milk.

Related Information:
Proceedings of an FAO/APHCA/CFC-FUNDED workshop on:
Developing an Asian Regional Strategy for Sustainable Smallholder Dairy Development

Strategy and Investment Plan for Smallholder Dairy Development in Asia

Asia Pacific Dairy Strategy Project information

APHCA Brief: Dairy prices, policies and potential opportunities for smallholders in Asia, April 2008, by Nancy Morgan, Livestock Policy Officer, FAO Regional Office in Bangkok, Asia-Pacific Dairy Strategy Project

ILRI’s presentation to the workshop, ‘Dairy development for the resource poor: Lessons for policy and planning strategies’, by Nick Hooten, 27 February 2008.

Further Information Contact:
Nancy Morgan, 
Livestock Policy Officer, FAO Regional Office in Bangkok
Asia-Pacific Dairy Strategy Project
Email: Nancy.Morgan@fao.org

Steve Staal
Director of Enhancing Market Opportunities Theme
ILRI-Nairobi
Email: s.taal@cgiar.org

Evolution of Uganda’s dairy systems: Popular zero-grazing dairying does not suit all

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Evolution of Uganda's dairy systems

What’s needed is to make better use of cow manure to fertilize the country’s impoverished soils.

Is Uganda outgrowing its popular zero-grazing dairy model? Reports from a recent research study suggest that Ugandan policymakers may want to revisit their policies supporting the country’s booming dairy sector to sustain increasing yields of smallholder mixed crop-and-dairy production over the long term.

Before the 1980s, milk production in Uganda occurred largely in two contrasting production systems. There were the large, mostly government-owned, commercial dairy farms located in the wetter parts of the country on which exotic and cross-bred dairy cattle were kept and grazed on natural pastures. Then there were the pastoralists, who kept large numbers of local cattle under traditional management systems in the drier eastern and northeastern parts of the country.

From the mid-1980s, development agencies in Uganda began introducing zero-grazing systems, in which high-yielding genetically improved cows (pure or cross-bred with local cattle) are kept in stalls and fed with fodder cut and carried to them daily. These more ‘intensive’ dairy systems were promoted among Ugandan farmers along with training on managing dairy breeds and growing fodder. This gave many smallholders an incentive to buy exotic dairy cows or to upgrade their indigenous cows by cross-breeding them with exotic stock. Some of Uganda’s small farmers adopted strict zero-grazing practices while others combined grazing paddocks with stall feeding, a hybrid dairy production system that came to be known as ‘semi-intensive’.

As a result, there has been a steady increase over the last two decades in the numbers of improved dairy cows in Uganda’s national herd with concomitant  increases in national milk production yields, smallholder contributions to national milk production, dairy’s contribution to the national economy, and per capita milk consumption.

Ugandan dairy support
Sixteen years ago, in 1992, the government launched a ‘Milk Master Plan’ to improve (simultaneously) rural incomes, farm living standards, national self-sufficiency in milk production, and yields of surplus milk for export. With the liberation of the sub-sector in 1993, when the government’s monopoly on milk processing was broken, many medium and small-scale private milk processors emerged on the scene. To realize the objectives of its ‘Milk Master Plan’, Uganda in 1998 established a Dairy Development Authority.

With the rapid rise of dairying among smallholder farmers, people began to question whether intensification was the best option for Ugandan farmers and whether these mixed dairy-crop production systems could be sustained.

To respond to these concerns, an in-depth study funded by the Danish International Development Agency (DANIDA) was carried out between 2001 and 2005 by the Ugandan National Agriculture Research Organization (NARO), Makerere University, the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) and the Danish Institute of Agricultural Sciences (DIAS).

The study, focusing on dairy economics and nutrient cycling, was carried out in three districts—Mbarara, in southwestern of Uganda; Masaka, in southern Uganda; and Jinja, in the southeast, which is much smaller than the other two districts but with the highest human population.

Results of the research study indicate that Uganda may be ‘outgrowing’ its successful, and ever popular, zero-grazing model. The results show that Uganda’s booming dairy farming is profitable regardless of the level of ‘intensification’ that farmers employ through use of feeds and other inputs. This finding suggests is that a high-input / highly intensified production system like Uganda’s popular and heavily policy-supported ‘zero grazing’ system is not necessarily the best option for all of the country’s small-scale crop-and-dairy farmers. Even the country’s most progressive dairy farmers, who have adopted zero-grazing en masse, may want to revisit their choice of production system to sustain their crop as well as dairy production over the long term.

Another finding of the study is that all of Uganda’s dairy farmers, whether intensive, semi-intensive or agro-pastoral, tend to under-use their animal manure as organic fertilizer for their crop fields. The study found the quality of the soils on Uganda’s mixed dairy-crop farms already below a level considered critical for crop production and continuing to drop. This deteriorating situation is fast eroding the long-term sustainability of these farming systems; if nothing is done, food insecurity and poverty in the country are likely to worsen. This is despite these farmers having adequate amounts of manure from their dairy cows to use as fertilizing soil amendments. It is likely that Uganda’s dairy farmers are under-using their livestock manure to fertilize their crop soils because they lack the labour needed to save, transport and apply the manure.

RESEARCH RECOMMENDATION:• This study revealed how surprisingly little research can yet tell us about the advantages and disadvantages of African farmers applying livestock manure as fertilizer on their mixed-production farms. We still lack, for example, sufficient comparative data on its effects on small-farm economics, nutrient cycling, practicability, and labour trade-offs.

• We don’t yet know enough about these matters to recommend best-practice manure management and application methods for Uganda’s many small dairy producers. We ought to. We need to research manure management in the context of Africa’s complex small farming systems so that we can offer the continent’s farmers recommendations validated by research.

Download the Research Report: http://hdl.handle.net/10568/257

Download the Research Brief: http://hdl.handle.net/10568/3808

Partners:

Ugandan National Agriculture Oragnization (NARO)
Makerere University
Danish Institute of Agricultural Sciences (DIAS)

Further Information Contact:
Isabelle Baltenweck
Scientist
International Livestock Research Institute
Nairobi, Kenya
Email: i.baltenweck@cgiar.org
Telephone: +254 (20) 422 3000

OR

Sarah Mubiru
National Agricultural Research Organization (NARO)
Kampala, Uganda
Email: smubiru@naro-ug.org

Research paper casts doubt on claims for pre-Colombian Chilean chickens

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But ancient chicken DNA obtained from Easter Island may represent a genetic signature of an early Polynesian dispersal of chickens.
 

pre-Colombian Chilean chickensDid some native Amerindian breeds of chicken pre-date the arrival in the Americas of European chickens with the Spanish in the 15th century?

Many would like to think so. Such evidence is used to support ancient trading contact between Polynesian and South American Indians. Some have passionately argued the case for pre-Colombian chickens, citing in particular the unusual Chilean Araucana and Passion Fowl breeds.

The Araucana breed, for example, thought to be descended from indigenous Amerindian chickens, lays blue/green-shelled eggs and has distinctive plumage. Because features of its plumage are also found among Asian rather than Mediterranean chickens, it’s been hypothesized that the Araucana breed might have an Asian origin. A similar origin has been posited for Chile’s Passion Fowl. It is thought by some that these historic Chilean breeds could have arrived with early Polynesian or Dutch traders on the Pacific Coast of South America.

But a recent scientific paper published in the prestigious USA Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (29 July 2008) says that molecular evidence counters such an early introduction via Polynesia. Results of this research investigation into the putative ancient Polynesian lineage of Chile’s native chickens indicate an Indo-European genetic origin. This paper has generated a lively debate that is still on-going. (See, for example, the subsequent Letter to the Editor of PNAS from Storey.)
Other recent research suggests that there were multiple centres of origin for the domestication of the chicken across both Southeast Asia and the Indian sub-continent. The high genetic similarity between European and Indian sub-continent  mitochondrial DNA sequences suggests that the latter was the main source for chickens introduced into Europe.

pre-Colombian Chilean chickensThis molecular evolutionary genetic analysis of the origin of Chile’s native chickens was carried out by scientists working in nine institutes across the globe. Animal geneticists and archaeologists at four universities in Australia (Sydney, Adelaide, Queensland and the Australian National University) worked with archaeologists from the University of Durham (UK), medical biochemists and microbiologists from Uppsala University (Sweden), geneticists from Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile (which extracted the DNA samples) and livestock geneticists working at the Nairobi-based International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) and a Beijing Joint Laboratory on Livestock and Forage Genetic Resources (JLLFGR) run jointly by ILRI and China’s Institute of Animal Sciences. ILRI and JLLFGR did the PCR and DNA sequencing work for this study. Researchers working in ILRI’s labs in Nairobi and Beijing are working to improve understanding of the diversity in backyard chicken populations and production systems so as to reduce chicken diseases and subsequent poverty in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia.

Interestingly, although this molecular evolutionary detective work provides no support for a pre-Colombian Polynesian introduction of chickens to South America, DNA sequences from ancient chicken remains obtained from two archaeological sites on Easter Island represent a genetic signature of an early Polynesian, rather than 15th century Spanish, introduction of chickens to the island.
Lying far off the coast of Chile and named by Dutch sailors who landed there on Easter Sunday in 1722, Easter Island is famous for the more than 800 iconic stone statues, called moai, of giant heads that dot its landscape. The ancient chicken specimens from Easter Island are clearly pre-European, indicating that they form part of an original ‘Polynesian/Pacific’ chicken dispersal possibly subsequently erased across the western Polynesian islands.

pre-Colombian Chilean chickensThe lineages of domestic plants and animals are often replaced by later introductions of the same domestic species with a different genetic heritage, thus erasing evidence of the initial dispersal. It is thus possible that the Indo-European chicken haplotypes found in Chile may have formed a more recent wave of dispersals, overwriting and removing earlier Indonesian sequences across western Polynesia but failing to do the same on distant Easter Island.

But at present, there is no evidence to support an ancient Asia Pacific route for the introduction of Indo-European chickens into Chile.


More research is needed to resolve the timing and nature of introductions, modern diversity and regional adaptation of local chicken breeds in South America, Easter Island and Southeast Asia. Of particular interest will be chickens kept by some indigenous communities in the Amazon forest, the origins of which remain a mystery.

‘The origin of South America’s first chickens remains debatable today,’ says Han Jianlin, an author of this paper, who heads the ILRI-Chinese Joint Lab in Beijing. ‘But I predict that we will have the definitive answer within the next five years. That’s how fast this molecular detective work is moving.’

pre-Colombian Chilean chickens

‘What is remarkable about this work,’ says Olivier Hanotte, another ILRI author of the paper, who leads an ILRI project to characterize indigenous animal genetic resources of the developing world, ‘is that it is allowing us to tackle major questions about human history that we would not have been able even to ask just 20 years ago.’

‘We didn’t set out in this research,’ says Hanotte, ‘to advance understanding of the history of the world’s farming societies. But that’s just where this research—conducted to characterize chicken genetic resources of and for the poor—has led us.~

Further Information Contact:
Olivier Hanotte
Molecular Biologist, ILRI
Nairobi, KENYA
Email: o.hanotte@cgiar.org
Telephone: +254 (20) 422 3000

OR

Han Jianlin
Scientist & Head, ILRI-Chinese Joint Lab in Beijing
Beijing, CHINA
Email: h.jianlin@cgiar.org

Indian Council of Agricultural Research awards dairy project

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'Team research for the Biennium 2005-6'
 


Indian Council of Agricultural Research awards dairy projectOn 16 July 2008, the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) in New Delhi awarded its ‘Team Research for the Biennium (2005–6)’ to Abraham K Joseph (left) and his colleagues at ‘Capitalisation of Livestock Programme Experiences India’. CALPI is a program of Intercooperation, a Swiss development organization funded by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation.


The award was presented by the Hon. Union Minister for Agriculture, Mr Sharad Pawar (who is also the president of ICAR) and the Hon. Minister of State for Agriculture, Shri Kanti Lal Bhuria. It was bestowed on CALPI’s ‘Action Research to Improve the Traditional Milk Sector’.

ICAR’s ‘National Award for Outstanding Interdisciplinary Team Research in Agriculture and Allied Sciences for the Biennium 2005–6’ was bestowed on Intercooperation / CALPI for the significant contribution it has made to understanding the structure, functioning and dynamics of India’s traditional dairy value chain and identifying and implementing critically important interventions to help improve it.

The ministers said that this project helped dairy producers, consumers and market intermediaries alike to assimilate and adopt innovative ideas on how to organize producer groups and vendor associations. CALPI’s action research demonstrated that, given the right recognition and support in the form of technology, infrastructure, management and capacity building, India’s traditional dairy enterprises are viable, are operating within the nation’s food laws, and are contributing immensely to socially inclusive and regionally balanced economic growth.

Capitalisation of Livestock Programme Experiences India (CALPI)

The overall goal of CALPI is to capitalize on experiences, competence, credibility, reputation and demand to influence conditions in the livestock sector so that these address the top priorities and challenges of rural Indian livelihoods.

CALPI works in livestock policy development, livestock service delivery systems, veterinary and animal husbandry education, livestock-environment interactions, knowledge networks and research partnerships, livestock products marketing, and human and institutional development.

The programme supports projects and partners at macro-, meso- and, to a lesser extent, micro-levels largely through action research, networking, pilot activities, workshops and advocacy. The programme is implemented through Intercooperation.

See CALPI fact sheet: http://www.intercooperation.org.in/km/pdf/calpi/CALPI%20Fact%20sheet.pdf

This winning project to improve the traditional milk sector, one of 17 projects CALPI implements and supports, was conducted in the Khammam and Vijayawada districts of Andhra Pradesh, India. Although India’s vast traditional milk sector comprises an estimated 46 million dairy producing households and 111 million dairy consuming households, this sector remains one of the country’s least studied.

Indian Council of Agricultural Research awards dairy project
ILRI’s Regional Representative for Asia, Iain Wright (left) 
with the CALPI team, Shefali Misra, A K Joseph and V Padmakumar.

This action research was implemented by a group of organizations, including Catalyst Management Services and the National Dairy Research Institute, in Bangalore; two NGOs, SECURE and ACTIVE, located at Khammam; and the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), based in Nairobi. The research was steered by a multi-stakeholder Research Reference Group made up of representatives of each of these partners, including ILRI, and chaired by the Dairy Development Commissioner of Andhra Pradesh State.

This project has jointly published several publications with ILRI. These will be further used in a new project—‘Knowledge to Action: Enhancing Traditional Dairy Value Chains’—launched by ILRI and local partners in Guwahati, the capitol of India’s northeastern Assam Province, on 29 September 2008. This new project will work with Assam’s traditional milk sector to improve its marketing efficiencies, building on ILRI’s collaborative smallholder dairy work in East Africa as well as other parts of India. The Assam dairy project is funded by the UK Department for International Development through their ‘Research-into-Use Programme’.

As livestock professionals grapple with new challenges on account of rapid rises in the consumption and production of dairy and meat products in the South; the rapid spread of livestock diseases, some of them transmissible to people; and the anticipated damage climate change will cause South Asia’s agriculture, CALPI and ILRI are jointly organizing a South Asia knowledge-sharing workshop in Delhi 13–15 October 2008 on ‘Livestock and Development in a Changing Context’. The aim of the workshop is to understand the knowledge and information needs of those with a stake in livestock production where it interfaces livelihoods and environments of the poor. The 40-odd participants of the workshop will also identify ways to share the large body of applied knowledge that could be useful to livestock professionals in the region.

Related Articles:


Traditional milk market (CALPI)


ILRI Top Story: 22 September 2008
When policies support-rather than harass-the informal markets of poor countries


ILRI Top Story: 06 June 2008
Pig marketing opportunities in Assam and Nagaland

Further Information Contact:
Iain Wright
Regional Representative,
ILRI, South Asia
Email: i.wright@cgiar.org
Telephone: +91 (11) 2560 3653